A Spy's Life (45 page)

There was a pause. Harland knew Smith-Canon was wondering how to approach Eva.

‘Your son is a very resourceful young man. I’ve never seen anyone learn this brain-computer technology so fast. He must have extraordinary powers of focus – also a tremendous mental agility, I would imagine. Is that right, Mrs Rath?’ She nodded.

Harland was grateful to him for talking about Tomas’s qualities in the present, not in the past.

‘I’m glad you’re here because we really have to discuss some difficult issues. Unfortunately we can’t leave them because a patient like Tomas may be struck down by an infection very rapidly indeed.’ He paused and drank some whisky. ‘A couple of days ago I explained the exact position to him. It was hard for him to bear this information by himself, with only myself and Mrs Bosey in the room, but I knew he’d probably already arrived at a fairly accurate conclusion about his prospects. I told him about the risks of infection, chiefly of the respiratory and urinary systems. The former is far more dangerous and I felt I needed to establish his views on cardiopulmonary resuscitation in the case of a life-threatening infection developing. If resuscitation – what we call CPR – is not wished for by the patient it is important for us to know that beforehand. Your views count too and I can give as much advice as you need. But the point is that Tomas has made his wishes utterly clear. This morning he wrote that he did not want resuscitation. I have a copy of his message here.’ He handed Eva a sheet of paper. She looked at it for a moment and passed it to Harland.

There was just one line. ‘I want natural death – not unnatural life – tomas Rath.’

‘Of course,’ Smith-Canon continued, ‘he can revise his view. He can change his mind every day if he wants – in fact every hour is fine by me. It’s his life, after all. Still, I thought you should know his thinking because you probably want to discuss it between yourselves and talk it over with him.’

Eva was looking down at her hands. ‘Is he in pain, Doctor?’

‘A fair amount of discomfort – yes. He suffers from spasms and these are very painful. The business of catheters and tracheotomy tubes is also unpleasant and there are numerous minor complaints which make life wretched for him. His head appears to have mended very well but I believe he is suffering from some pretty nasty headaches. Of course, there are some things which may improve as the tissue in his brain heals. We have noticed that the response of his eyelids has got much better and he has more lateral movement in his eyes than he possessed when he first came out of the coma. But I must emphasise that I think the chances of him regaining substantial movement are very slim indeed.’ He stopped and puckered his chin.

‘I’m very sorry, Mrs Rath. I hate to have to tell you these things. I am also very, very sorry that this should have happened to a clever young man like your son.’ Harland saw that Eva was touched by his solicitousness. ‘So’ – he gulped the rest of his whisky – ‘we shall have another talk soon, no doubt. Meanwhile, you must come and go as you please.’

As they neared Century House, Eva turned round to him in the back seat and said quietly, ‘Bobby, whatever you need me to do, I will do it – anything.’ She held his eyes for several seconds after saying this. He understood. They were on the same side now.

They took the lift to the top floor and were greeted by a young man in jeans and a heavy pullover who introduced himself as Jim, the caretaker. He said he would be a floor below them. His job was to keep watch on the two floors through the night, so if they needed anything they only had to ring down. He’d be up whatever the hour.

Harland settled himself at a long glass table with a view over Waterloo station and the Houses of Parliament and opened up the laptop. Eva sat down in a rectangular leather chair and contemplated him, one arm supporting the other and two fingers pressed to her temple.

‘You’re going to write this report?’

‘Yes,’ he said, without looking up. ‘I need to get it off tomorrow. The sooner they have it, the less exposed we are.’

‘You have had no sleep for two days.’

He looked up. ‘I’ve slept a little, but I work best like this. Besides, I’ve always been able to concentrate in this building.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t tell you. This is the old headquarters of MI6. I worked on the sixth floor in the eighties – not such a good view as from here.’

She looked perplexed. ‘But why are we here?’

‘Because Cuth Avocet also used to work here and he thought it would be amusing to base his business in the building when it was converted. He says it’s the one place nobody would look for us.’

She was unimpressed. ‘That’s a very British thing to do. Why does everything have to be
amusing
to you?’

‘It doesn’t – it’s just a whim of his. That’s all. It doesn’t mean anything.’

She seemed unconvinced. She rose to find herself a drink. By the time she’d opened a bottle of red wine and returned to him with a glass, he had started an outline of the report.

‘You don’t show anything, do you, Bobby? You’re sealed up like an old building that’s dangerous for people to enter.’

He didn’t reply but turned from the screen and looked at her.

‘You feel things,’ she continued, ‘but you don’t express them. I know you feel badly for Tomas – that’s why you came to find me. But you haven’t said anything about what you feel and you don’t choose to acknowledge what others feel.’

Of course she was right. Louise had been right too. Harriet was right. Everyone was bloody well right.

‘Look, a lot of time is wasted with people’s pity for themselves. By writing this report I can at least affect something. I can begin to settle things with Kochalyin – and it won’t be just for me.’

‘Did he do this to you – did he cripple your empathy?’

‘You speak as if it was some kind of physical organ,’ he said sharply. ‘If you must know, he didn’t damage my
empathy
, as you put it.’

‘See, look at you pushing me away. You don’t like to talk about these things. Perhaps it’s not your lack of empathy. Perhaps it’s your inability to trust other people.’

‘And where did you learn this sensitivity of yours – in bed with a war criminal?’

She was stung and turned away.

He softened his tone.

‘Look, you’re probably right about my faults – but you’re not telling me anything I haven’t been told before. Just now I need to focus on this. That’s all there is to it.’

She sat down, stared at the view, then levelled her gaze at him.

‘I hope it will be all right if I stay here,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t want to be alone.’

He didn’t hear this. He had already started the first sentence of the report, which reminded Jaidi of the terms of his brief. He was eager to put everything on record because, apart from his letter of authority, no paper had passed between them.

By 5 a.m. he’d finished a draft. Most of it had come easily but there was a problem with the section concerning the massacre. He needed to be more accurate about the site and explain the origin of the two pictures. He also had to have Tomas’s statement.

He got up and arranged the blue duffel over Eva’s curled-up form on the sofa. He stood and watched her for a moment, feeling the pity he had failed to express earlier. Then he slumped down on the sofa opposite her.

Tomas started making his statement at eleven that morning. Harriet was in the room with him. He took a short nap, then continued with Harland by his side until about two in the afternoon. At Eva’s suggestion they had taken turns to be with him because she knew he found it harder to concentrate with them all there. No one looked at what was on the screen until he had finished. Then Harriet printed it out.

Harland sat down and read the single sheet of paper. In a glance he knew that it was exactly what he needed.

i am tomas rath – a czech citizen – on 15 7 95 i was in bosnia with oleg kochalyin – aka viktor lipnik – and witnessed a massacre – this was arranged by kochalyin and serb army – we followed four serb trucks into the hills – they contained 70 muslim men and boys – when we arrived we heard first shots – i did not know about this until i saw bodies – the hands of victims were tied behind them – i helped a man who fell from truck – because i did this they kept him to last and i was made to shoot him – i killed this man – they said they would shoot me if i did not kill him – i am guilty of murder – i wish to say sorry for what i did – oleg kochalyin is my step-father – i have given two photos to tribunal – one of him in austria which proves he was not killed – the other photo of massacre was filmed by serb soldier – i took the film later – I testify this is all true – t rath.

Tomas was exhausted from the effort of writing but he could not sleep. He watched Harland as he read the statement, then his mother and Harriet. He felt an enormous shame. Taking so long over each letter and each word had meant that he’d dwelled on the scene for the best part of four hours. Yet he hadn’t possessed the stamina to hit the thousands of letters it would have taken to express how he’d been trapped into witnessing the massacre.

Oleg had told him there was some action on the hill. They got into the army vehicle with the smirking Serb soldiers and drove the two kilometres up a narrow, unmade road. It was a long climb. The soldiers passed a bottle of plum brandy around. When they came to a halt, Tomas saw the men in the trucks ahead of them and it had dawned on him what kind of action Oleg had been referring to. The prisoners were terrified. They knew there was no escape because even if they jumped from the trucks and made a run for it, the hill was bare and offered no cover but scrub. The Serbs enjoyed their fear and toyed with a few of the Muslims, pretending to let them go, then shooting them.

They were taken out in small groups, lined up along a flat wall of rock and shot. Some begged for their lives, but most were so shocked they couldn’t speak and faced their death with a leaden, drained resignation. Literally, their blood ran from their faces and they began to stare, almost as if death had entered them before the bullets. Tomas couldn’t believe what he was seeing, the way the soldiers casually executed them. Oleg helped with a special, silent glee, standing with a younger Serb officer shooting his pistol. Tomas had started to edge away. His arms were free and he could run and he thought Oleg would stop them shooting at him. But as he slid round a truck a middle-aged man was rifle-butted out of the back of it and fell sprawling on to the stones. He was cut on the side of his forehead and instinctively Tomas went to help him, picking him up from the road and examining the wound. The bewilderment in the man’s eyes was something Tomas would never forget. The man couldn’t reconcile this simple act of human concern with what he knew was happening fifty metres away.

The Serbs saw an opportunity for some fun. They pretended to the man that he had been saved by Tomas, and he was allowed to stand on the other side of the road so that he could be taken back to his village. He stood convulsed by grief as his friends and relations were killed. At the end of the slaughter the Serb officer, a man in his thirties with narrow eyes and a vicious temper, marched over, pulled out a pistol and gave it to Tomas. Then he held his own pistol against Tomas’s temple and ordered him to kill the man. Tomas refused. Oleg came over and barked at him.

‘Don’t think I will save you. It is him or you. If you don’t kill him you will both be shot.’

He laughed as if he had made a joke and Tomas pulled the trigger. There was nothing else for it. A simple calculation – one death against two.

It was some days before he could think straight again but when he emerged from his shock he decided on two actions: he would eventually admit his own crime to whichever authority would deal with it and he would act as a witness to the massacre and Oleg Kochalyin’s part in it. That was why he had remained in touch with Oleg after the return from Bosnia and why he went along with the fantasy that Yugoslavia had been little more than a hunting trip – a chance for two men to bond. Kochalyin had tested him, slyly referring to the events to see his reaction. Tomas had smiled knowingly, as if the whole thing had been an escapade. Over the months and years of this revolting pretence he’d got everything he needed. He had the evidence of Oleg’s rapidly expanding operation and the enormous numbers of people who were corrupted by him. He came to understand that the man he had known all his life was not an individual but a force of evil. That was melodramatic, but there was no other way to describe it.

There was a heavy silence in the room. They had all read the statement. Harland coughed, came over to him, put his hand on the unbandaged part of his shoulder and said, ‘You had no other choice. This is not your crime, it’s his. Any court in the world would agree on that. The main point is that the statement is very helpful and perfectly written – well done.’ He squeezed him gently and smiled.

His mother and Harriet added their congratulations. He wasn’t fooled; he still knew he was guilty.

‘Tomas is on the Internet now,’ said Harriet brightly. ‘The man came to fix it all this morning. He’s got an e-mail address which he can open up by himself.’

‘In which case you will need my address,’ said Harland. ‘Shall I put it in your contact list?’

Tomas blinked.

While he tapped at the keyboard, he said, ‘I have been writing the report to recommend the opening of the investigation into what happened. I need a location for the massacre. Does Kukuva mean anything to you? It’s a village in the Serb part of Bosnia with a Muslim population.’

Two blinks.

‘It was a long shot anyway. Do you have any clear idea where you were on that day?’

Two blinks.

‘I thought not. Still, we may be able to do it another way. I got some maps this morning from Stanfords and I’ve drawn over them so that we can use them together.’

He left the computer and rummaged in a plastic bag.

‘But first,’ he said, ‘I need to go over the photograph with you. Can you face it?’

A blink.

He produced the video still. It was the first time Tomas had seen it for a few months.